Solar and wind have won technology race

Biomass/biogas are still in the race. I hope they will catch up a bit more. Things looks promising there. Geothermics is largely out of the race. At the moment transport and storage of energy are the real problems, not so much the production.

Also, there never was a true competition. In the past coal was subsidised (Google "Kohlepfennig", roughly everyone had to give some pennies to keep coal production cheap and going). Nuclear power is still subsidised via the EU. This changes now, that coal get's less, and wind and solar power get more support. Nuclear power, I don't really know. Compared to the USA, Germany was always more of a socialist country (even the west, while it was divided), with strong influence of the government on economics (Google "soziale Marktwirtschaft" - the goal was not free markets, but socially balanced/guided markets).

I don't think one can do a fair calculation using the numbers from Germany, because there are too many direct and indirect influences on the energy cost.

Nuclear power is particularly tricky to calculate, because the waste must be stored so long till it becomes harmless. It will be a long time effort to maintain and also protect the storage facilities. Nuclear waste must not get into the hands of terrorists or criminals. And this must be ensured, likely for more than 1000 years. That's a tremendous cost, which is usually not factored in todays electricity bills.

A slightly tangential point: Germany exports energy. Cheap energy. Even now that we shut down coal and nuclear power plants, we often produce more energy than we consume, and sell that to neighboring countries - including France which is big in nuclear power, but who have problems particularly in winter.

Other times we buy energy. But the total is, that Germany exports more energy than it imports. The Energiewende is not harming our ability to sell energy, rather makes it so, that at times energy is offered for free to our neighbors, because we have way too much of it.

http://www.abendblatt.de/politik/de...8765/Deutschland-verschenkt-seinen-Strom.html

Abstract, "Germany gives electric power away for free"

The Energiewende is working well. We have enough electric power. We have affordable electric power, in some parts I want to call it cheap. We get it from an increasing number of clean sources. We become less dependent on imports. Our problems to handle nuclear waste at least do not grow as rapidly anymore and will finally come to a stop, when no waste is produced anymore. And, prices keep falling, new solar and wind power plants produce electricity for less and less costs.

To me, this is a very promising prospect.

PS: Given the numbers that I know, wind power is really the cheapest source of power that we have currently, and therefore the most popular among producers. Neither nuclear nor coal can compete with wind power, except when long-term predictability is the core factor.

 

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89% of energy consumed in Germany is non-renewable.

 

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We're not there yet. But your number is not up to date. It's more like 80% now, maybe even less. Some days it's less than 50%, but those are exceptions. It takes time.

 

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Not for sugar cane based alcohol. Its big problem is big oil's lobbies (and campaign money) have made it illegal to import. So rather than drive a CO2 net negative release fuel going into your standard IC engine car we add to global warming with gasoline. Big Oil's huge profits fund large campaign contributions and that means more to Congress than the world Joe American's grandchildren will inherit.

It still could be “glassified” into disks about two feet in diameter, and a few inches thick (Needs to be thin enough for decay heat to reach the surface, without core melting.) These disks are loaded onto a special ship with automatic loader and then when ship is steaming over a deep ocean trench* simply hurled off the stern, a couple each second, by an automatic machine like those that hurl "clay pigeons" for shot gun practice. They will spread laterally as they sink more than a Km apart on average, and begin a multi-billion year trip deep into the earth's interior. - simple and cheap never seen again "storage." I have given more details in earlier posts.


* There is one of the most suitable south of Florida and North of Porto Rico.

 

No, it takes energy, which we don't have.

 

Give it a rest, not every country has the land to devote to such a crop.

 

Nor do they for growing coffee. Have you not heard of trading? Many countries don't have land to get oil from, but their cars are still supplied with gasoline, and that has to stop if we care about our great grand children more than oil companies care about their profits.

 

All you have to stop is the cars. It's ridiculous to think that countries would rather sell cheap industrial alcohol than rum.

 

I sold my car more than a dcade ago. I use public transit, metro and buses, which are also free to me as over 65. They are also much faster as buses have their own trafic lanes (but taxis with passenger can use them too.)

Suburan Americans don't have this choice so I think you must be drunk to suggest getting rid of cars, especially when we don't need to as for a few $100 an IC gasoline engine can be converted to use pure alcohol. We pay now in pollution and global warming because our society lacked good rational zoning. Instead of "residential" it should have been "any use" except hazardous ones mixed in with homes. - walk or bike to a mall, and automated movie, grocery or hardware store, post office branch etc. Yes they would be smaller and less efficient (need more clerks /per transaction, but we need more simple jobs)

On rum: there is ample supply at the price when heavily taxed and unlike sugar cane alcohol, it is legal to import rum from tropical lands.

 

My question is why would a company choose to make less money on alcohol for fuel when they can make more converting the same feedstock into a beverage?

 

Answer is they can make more than you (or the market) can drink. They will make all the rum they can sell, first then make the fuel, if allowed to sell it. The potential market for car fuel is a hundred or more times larger than for booze.

 

I prefer "sustainable" for that reason.

And why should it be? The costs will be paid continuously, so they should be (and are) added to the electricity cost continuously. The reality though is that because the waste volume is tiny, the cost is comparatively tiny.

Germany (like the USA) is a representative democracy and such governments are set up specifically to enable a third option: leadership. The masses often make wrong judgements based on fear, selfishness, ignorance, special interest group propaganda, etc. It is the job of a leader to convince them that a different path is the right choice and to make the right choice and then accept the political consequences/fallout.

But I get that that isn't the reality and that most politicians aren't leaders but pollsters. Lack of real leadership is a significant problem in Western countries right now.

 

That may be, but the problem I see is that so far, the rise in solar and wind is only keeping up with the drop in nuclear, without much additional to offset coal. I'm skeptical that Germany can shut down both nuclear and coal at the same time or reach its carbon reduction goals. I don't think it is possible for solar and wind to scale as high as Germany wants them to because of their unreliability.

 

Same reason that some companies choose to make less money selling crude oil when they could make more converting the same feedstock to gasoline. Same reason that some companies choose to make less money selling ammonia when they could make more converting the same feedstock to fertilizer.

 

I think the goal is actually similar to what you described. Shut down nuclear, keep some coal, and also gas power plants. There is a distinct lack of energy storage facilites right now, and thus solar power only can help during the daytime (luckily this si when industry needs the most electric power). Wind is predictable for somedays ahead, that helps to plan, but it is unreliable overall.

The problem with the energy storage is a rather surprising one - it's not technology. But in many places the locals are against the construction. Tradiational solution require rather large artificial lakes, to use the potential energy of water as energy storage. These lakes are unwanted for a few reasons:

- They destroy whatever has been there before
- They are potentially dangerous, if the dams can break. Particularly if they empty into a valley.
- They are mostly unusable for recreation and sports, because their level is changing a lot.

There is a number of other storage facilities in research, but all the plans to store electricity for later use have shown to be problematic.

Until this is solved we cannot rely solely on wind and sun.

But I'd say, even if wind and solar power can only replace 50% of the fossil power plants, it is a step forward.

Let's put it this way - extremes are usually bad, and the golden path is somewhere in the middle. If the government was too loud mouthed and promised things that are out of reach (carbon reduiction goals)- well, who's surprised? They do it all the time. It's still nice to have less air pollution, and less nuclear waste to take care of.

Even if you say that nuclear waste is only little, we already have troubles with it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine

A significant inflow of water and a subtle loss of mechanical stability may jeopardise the underground mine integrity – the site is in danger of collapsing and becoming flooded.

In this salt mine there was put quite some nuclear waste, and it's leaking, because the barrels didn't stand salt and water. It seems all the waste must be retrieved, repackaged and stored elsewhere. The mine is already contaminated, the leaking waste caused more volumes of salt and water to become nuclear waste, which must be stored elsewhere, too.

I agree, that if the waste had been processed properly and stored properly, the problem would not even exist. But what people see is, that it's not been about safety, but about money - they wanted to safe money, fill their pockets, and now there is a mine full of leaking nuclear waste barrels which need to be cleaned up. In some ares of the mine, it's even doubtful if the waste can be fully retrieved and if ground water will be unaffacted.

People see this failure to store nuclear waste, and conclude, that the companies and politicians cannot be trusted. Thus they want to cut the root of the problem - stop the production of waste which appearently has become a threat to the envirnoment and all people living near that location.


It's hard to display nuclear power as a safe option, with such a counter example in the land.

 

In the EU, gasoline has at least 5% alcohol added, and drivers are strongly encouraged to use the 10% (E10) variant, if their cars can use it. Until the competition between food plants and energy plants for farmland became obvious, adding more alcohol to gasoline, or even use pure alcoloh as fuel, was a favorite option amoung politicians.

At the moment, they try to keep the damage low, and try to return the land to food production instead of energy production. But the 5% and 10% alcolhol added to gasoline is likely to stay, with the 10% sort meant to become the default (all new cars can use it, and it's sold cheaper).

 

Alcohol from corn (or sugar beets) does compete with food production. Sugar cane based alcohol rarely does, as food production is more profitable, IF the land can produce food.

Sugar cane is a grass, and grasses will grow on less rich land, but more importantly, on hillside too steep for mechanical harvesting. It traditionally has been manually harvested* and provides many low skill jobs and that (manual harvesting) always is where many are jobless (cheap labor).
- - - - -

* That does have a small environmental disadvantage: The workers burn the field before the annual cutting, as the leaves can cut their arms. It would be environmentally better if they cut the leaves off as first phase of the manual harvest, letting them fall to the ground, and decay /feed worms/ etc. Then instead of planting clover etc. every 5 or so years in the field, they might be able to grow cane for 7 years in the field before some nitrogen restoring crop is required.

SUMMARY: There is insignificant competition with food crops (for economic reasons NOT regulations) when sugar cane is grown. Also there is more than enough abandoned pasture to grow cane producing all the liquid fuel the world's current cars can used. They can for less than $300 be converted for using pure alcohol** - Actually the eutectic as removal of the last few percent that is water in the distillation product is done chemically and adds very signification to the cost of truly pure ETOH.

** Converting all the world's gasoline car to use pure alcohol would take about a decade and during that time, many distillation plants would need to be built near the new cane fields. Sugar cane is too bulky and of too low value per truck load to sent ~200 or so miles from the far edge of the field to the distillation plants. Expansion of distillation capacity for all the world's cars to use cane based alcohol, would also require about a decade.

There is no other program which could have so great a beneficial impact on Global Warming and provide so many low skill jobs for currently unemployed in poor tropical lands (making them buyers of first world productions). To not do this is a crime against future generations. No new technology is required! This is a simple sustainable solution to what may be the greatest problem facing humanity.